This is a brief discussion of a lengthy multi-author multi-disciplinary field study of growth-faulted deposits in Brunei. There are no sexy figures here, but a critique of the application of sequence stratigraphic “concepts”. This discussion is all the more interesting because of the reply. If you take the time to read this stuff in detail, let me know what you think.

Normanskill graywacke beds, well exposed along the Hudson River, contain abundant sole markings which indicate paleocurrents flowing in various directions. Northeasterly and north-westerly flow were dominant directions, but sole markings indicating currents toward almost all other directions exist. The considerable divergence of paleocurrents suggests a greater complexity of Ordovician paleogeography than is generally assumed.

Point-bar deposits in the Clear Fork Group (Lower Permian) of north-central Texas are exposed both in cross section and in plan as exhumed arcuate accretionary ridges. A thin basal lag of locally derived caliche and mudstone fragments is overlain by a 2 to 3 m thick epsilon cross-stratified unit which fines upward from very fine sandstone at the base to mudstone at the top. Sandstone beds in the epsilon units are almost entirely cross-laminated and were deposited by straight-crested ripples, most of which are oriented at 40° to 65° to the main channel direction.

The Clear Fork point bars were deposited by small, variable-discharge, perennial streams with high sinuosity. The straight-crested ripples migrating on the point bar surfaces are oblique rather than perpendicular to the near-bed flow direction. The cause of such considerable obliquity was primarily a large transverse gradient in local downstream sediment transport rate and, to a lesser degree, components of transverse near-bed fluid velocity due to helicoidal flow.